Web-building spiders are excellent model organisms to study the behavioural adaptations to novel habitats such as the dark and food-limited subterranean cave habitat. Cave-dwelling orb spiders in the genus Meta show several potential behavioural adaptations in both their webs (which do not have the typical frame of non-cave orb spiders) and their foraging and dispersal behaviour. Thomas will explore some of the things we do know about these fascinating spiders as well as discuss some of the many things we still do not know.

Dr Thomas Hesselberg is a lecturer at the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education where he directs the department’s online PgCert in Ecological Survey Techniques. His research is on the behavioural ecology of insects and spiders with a focus on web-building behaviour in orb spiders. Recently he has developed an interest in how spiders adapt their webs to different habitats including to islands, cities and caves.

entoLIVE is delivered by the Biological Recording Company, British Entomological & Natural History Society, Royal Entomological Society and Amateur Entomologists’ Society, with support from Buglife and the Field Studies Council.